Horny Tears
by Trogdor19
Summary: Post-Luke & Lorelai first kiss. Lorelai keeps running into things, courtesy of post-kissing brain fog. Miss Patty suggests a sex marathon might be the cure. Sexy times, hard conversations, and second first dates come about as Lorelai adjusts to Luke's new role in her life, and how different he looks to her now.
1. Miss Patty's Master Plan

_Note: This is from post 4x22, the days after Luke and Lorelai's first kiss. I wrote this before I watched forward, so this is all purely my interpretation._

 _Also, my timeline isn't canon. In Season 5, they say Luke and Lorelai have only known each other for 8 years but to me, that doesn't make sense bc Luke has lived in Stars Hollow his whole life and if Lorelai moved there when Rory was born, it seems like they would have met before 8 years previous._

 _Dedicated to Goldnox, because Gilmore Girls and L &L make her very happy, and I do like to keep my favorite writing buddy happy. _

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_Lorelai POV_

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I toy with my coffee cup, staring past a table of out-of-towners and the diner's counter with a faint headache gathering in the center of my forehead. I remember to blink and my brows unbunch, dissolving the headache.

 _Don't frown so much, Lorelai. It gives you wrinkles._

"Thanks, Emily," I mumble to my flashback version of my mother's voice, attempting to wash it away with a sip of coffee that turns out to be stone cold. What? My coffee is never cold at Luke's. It rarely stays in the cup long enough to get cold anywhere, but it hasn't been cold at Luke's since he fired that stoner kid for doing Nirvana impressions on the table tops. Plus, who does Luke think he is, yelling at me for having a boyfriend I don't have and then kissing me in front of my Inn and a pillow-clad Kirk, and then not keeping up with my coffee refills? Am I that bad of a kisser?

I glare down at my cup, realizing it's full to the brim. No wonder Luke hasn't refilled it.

He glances over to my table and my head whips up, but even with reflexes on full-curiosity speed, I'm not fast enough to catch anything in his expression other than the sort of absent vigilance that's second nature for monitoring customer's drinks in food service.

How can he look at me all cool and blasé, and also kiss the way he did last night? It wasn't like, "Oh, okay this is a French kiss, so I guess I'll put my tongue and a little effort into it." It was an electric-storm worthy shock, like fate stuck one of its more personal parts into a light socket. How could all that electricity have been hidden inside a man I've seen three times a day for my entire adult life?

His hands on my waist last night felt like a revelation, like the first time I discovered my clit. But those same hands have fixed my window and taught me how to fish and bought me the Dragonfly Inn—or at least rooms four through seven and the bathroom upgrade. They're not _new_ hands.

My headache pinches in the center of my forehead, but I can't spare enough attention to smooth my eyebrows again. Has he been working out? He's had that green plaid shirt for at least three years, because I remember sewing the top button back on while Rory was getting ready for her junior formal. It seems like it fits the same, but his shoulders look wider beneath it. His eyes a little brighter blue.

He catches me staring again and comes over, pulling his order pad out of his pocket. His sleeves are rolled back, veins branching across the muscles of his forearms. Has he ever rolled up his sleeves before? Then again, it is kind of hot in here. How did I not notice how hot it's getting in here?

"You get hungry after all?"

"No! Why, do I look hungry?" Was I looking hungrily at him? I glance around, gauging responses. Kirk's eating slowly at the next table, staring at my left earlobe. I move on, checking for any out of the ordinary expressions.

"No, you look mad."

"Mad? I'm not mad." My headache eases as I pull a wide smile on. It's bad enough I was apparently a terrible kisser. I don't want him to think I'm angry with him, too.

Then again, he was going in for a third round when Kirk and his big pillow and bigger lungs came barreling down the stairs, so even if I'm awful, he's forgiving. My smile melts a little and his eyes are drawn downward, then flick back up to mine.

His expression is totally bland beneath the baseball cap I gave him, but he doesn't quite look the same.

My headache returns as I stare, trying to make the two versions of him line up. The new, Kissing Luke who has a little spark in his eye and a gentleness around his mouth when he looks at me. Who wears sweaters and takes off his hat, and doesn't snore at all in the room next to mine at the Inn last night.

I love a man who doesn't snore.

No tossing and turning either, so at least _he_ doesn't have sleep issues that will require me to sleep in a fancy guest room with a Jetson's TV console. Luke doesn't even have a guest room. I smile again.

He puts down his pad. "Okay, I give."

"Give me what? A free donut?" I flutter my eyelashes. "Why, Butch Danes, you charmer."

"You said you didn't want my donuts because they don't have sprinkles today. No, I give because you're staring at me like I've got something in my teeth but I've been upstairs to floss twice already and haven't eaten anything since. You're glaring one minute and smiling the next." He sighs. "So just give and tell me what's going on, or get out of here so I can get some work done instead of flossing my damn teeth again."

"Fine, be like that. But you owe me extra popcorn at the movies tonight." I unhook my purse off the chair and slide to my feet.

"That stuff is junk," he grouses. "You might as well eat the skimmings out of the fryer. That'd be closer to food."

I purse my lips to blow him an air kiss. "Gotta keep up my girlish figure."

Something gentles in his expression.

"There!" I blurt, missing my shoulder with my purse and nearly hooking it onto my ear instead.

He looks behind him, then back to me, frowning like I'm crazy, which is so normal it's practically Resting Luke Face. But for a flash, there he was. The different man I saw last night at the Inn. A zing rattles through my throat and my tongue goes dry, my nipples hardening under my shirt. I glance at the table but there's no water, only coffee, and I've got to get out of here because the two Lukes keep swapping in and out of focus. New Sexy Kissing Luke and Old Grouchy Luke.

I back up a step, still watching for that spark to come back into his eyes, and the chair behind me goes over. I stumble, the chair leg digging into the hollow at the back of my knee, and I pull a quick skip-hop to keep from falling.

"Lorelai!" Luke leaps forward to catch me and his order pen writes a jagged line on my sleeve as his hand closes over my arm.

Warm. Big. Were his hands always this big? I straighten to show him I've got this and my shoulder rams the glass door.

I'm hurting in at least half a dozen places now but all I can feel is his hand, my skin pulsing underneath it like I've developed a second heartbeat in my forearm. I can't have double vision and two hearts. I'm self-employed; I don't even have health insurance. God even knows how they'd hook up the EKG for a double heart test but it would cost the earth, and my wallet barely contains the state of Delaware right now.

Luke lets me go and rights the chair, frowning. "You want to take a rain check on that movie tonight? You probably shouldn't be eating all that greasy junk if you're not feeling well."

"Fine, feeling fine!" I grab a handful of Venetian blinds, then swap them for the doorknob and let myself out, walking away strong and confident.

I pause to take a deep breath of air. I've got this. I can date Luke. I can totally date Luke. Who would be easier to date than Luke? I already spend more time with him than I spend with my own daughter.

"Lorelai!" Miss Patty calls.

I swivel toward her voice.

"Yes?" That's better. Suave, in-charge. Business owning independent single woman me. I've got this.

"You're standing right in the street!" She hurries out, impressive bosom bouncing, and takes my arm. I glance around. And okay, yeah, this _is_ the street, but there's not a car in sight.

"I was crossing. Well, taking a short hiatus from crossing. I was going to get around to the rest of the crossing really soon, though, I promise."

"Uh-huh." She pats my arm. "Sweetie, you know what you need?"

"Patty, you know I don't like those special brownies your nephew sends. They're a little too…uh, vegetably for me." And musty. Like her nephew swept closet dust into the brownies along with the marijuana.

"Sex," she says, smoothing my sleeve back into place.

"Come again?"

She nods approvingly. "The more orgasms, the better. Luke's still young and he may not look it, but he's got some stamina. He carried in my new washer _and_ dryer last week. I say, let him fuck all that haze out of your head." She smiles. "If you do it right, you'll be able to concentrate long enough cross the street again, but you won't be able to walk that far."

With that little gem, she turns and strolls away.

I take stock of my body. All my skin is feverishly flushed. I'm already on my second pair of panties for the day, and they're damp straight through, like I was ogling Luke in his shower not his diner. I can't keep a whole sentence in my head that doesn't include the word "strip" and I haven't slept in three days.

First, because I was getting everything together for the trial run at the Inn, and then because I was trying to hear through the wall if Luke was sleeping, and also because I could hear Rory's stuffy little nose in the bed next to mine. I couldn't stand that she was crying not because Dean screwed up, but because of her own bad choices. Maybe for the first time ever.

I don't want to think about Rory and Dean. I don't want to think about how much concentration it would take to safely navigate back to my house to get a third dry pair of panties. I _do_ want to think more about the way Luke kissed me last night.

I turn and march back toward the diner. When has Miss Patty ever steered me wrong? Except for the naked crowd surfing. But really, anybody could have made that mistake.

The diner door flings open and I try not to look proud that I worked the doorknob correctly on my first try. Miss Patty was clearly right about what I needed to clear the fog out of what passed for my brain today.

We are adults. If we can date, we can fuck. And if he put all this fog into my brain, it's his responsibility to fuck it all away again.

Luke's brows go up at my dramatic re-entrance. His eyes jump back to the table where I'd been sitting, probably to see if I left my purse or a folder of Inn paperwork.

"I need to talk to you," I say from across the room, because everyone's gone silent anyway.

"Okay," Luke says. "Just let me finish up this order and—"

I slam the door and sweep across the crowded diner, not hitting a single table, chair, or gaping local. A fierce smile takes my face. This plan is already clearing my head.

"Or now, I guess," he mutters. "Be right back," he says to the barber from Plum Street. What's his name? Stan? Hilary? Who cares. He could have the face of a large-mouth bass and the voice of a parakeet right now, and I wouldn't notice.

I fly up the stairs, all my coordination restored by the promise of sex. If Luke sexes like he kisses, he better hope those floor beams are sturdy. Otherwise, his customers are going to need umbrellas to keep the drywall dust out of their pancakes. Again.

I pause inside his apartment. Luke's apartment. Oh sweet God, I'm going to have sex with Luke.

The doorknob acts as moral—and physical—support as my knees forget a lifetime of training in how to be knees.

"Whoa, whoa." Luke catches me around the waist just as the hinges start to creak a protest. "Are you okay?" He shifts me to one arm and closes the door with the other. "You getting sick or something?"

The heat from his hands is too much. I break out in a sweat, my second heartbeat moving from my forearm to somewhere much lower. Spinning away from him, I strip off my cashmere cardigan, the one I chose because the edges hang just right to highlight my breasts and I was hoping he'd look today. Not that he did. But looking at him made my nipples so sensitive I could feel exactly where the cardigan was laying.

I send the cardigan flying across his perfectly swept floor.

"You have to have sex with me. Miss Patty said it's the only way to get rid of this…" I wave my hands, trying to express a tingles-hot-flashes-dry-mouth-forget-how-to-walk-two-pairs-of-panties kind of feeling.

Luke stares at me for one heartbeat, two, ten. My second heart is starting to scream for the defibrillator by the time he shrugs and starts unbuttoning his belt.

At the clink of it, my libido revs to hurricane force. As does my panic.

"What—what are you doing?!" I stare at the leather as he pulls it out of the buckle.

I asked for it, I thought it, but I never in a thousand years expected Luke to just _do_ it. Like I'd requested a side of eggs instead of hot, sweaty, frenzied— I try to swallow but my throat is temporarily out of order.

"Obviously this is the only way to get you to stop running into stuff," he says, patient and a little irritated, but willing. "I was going to take it slow, but if Patty already knows more about our sex life than I do, then I'm putting my foot down."

He pulls off his hat, tossing it to land on the chair and leaving his head bare, which it never is except for special occasions.

His hat. His hat is off and his belt is unbuckled. Some part of me is waiting for my mother to come slamming into the room, shrieking at my nerve for even thinking this is acceptable behavior. Anything this good has to be firmly banned by the Emily Gilmore Life Committee.

"Why'd you ask?" he says. "What'd you think I was doing?"

"Um, changing your hat?" My voice sounds like I ordered it all the way from Bangladesh and the connection was bad. "I mean, for all I know you have a whole closet full of identical blue hats. That would explain why it never gets dirty or oily, even though you wear it every day and you work in a diner and—"

"I wash it," he says. "It's not dirty because I wash it. You gave me that hat, remember?"

Wash. Shower. Water droplets. Body. _Luke's_ body. Oh god, I'm about to see Luke's body. Will it be Diner Luke's body or New Luke's body, with the penis equivalent of that spark in his eye, just for me?

My vision goes black around the edges, all the blood in my brain clearly elsewhere engaged. "I umngh oh god," I say loudly and go for the door.

" _Lorelai_." It's New Luke's voice. I can tell without even turning around because it's gentle and hard all at once, with more emotion than has ever crept past of his plaid-locked reserve before.

What's left of my cognitive functions register the sound of his belt being buckled again, then the heat of his body right behind mine, his fingertips just skimming my waistline like he wants to be right there if I fall.

"It was a joke. The sex thing. Well, not a joke, but you're basically hysterical and I doubt I'd live through it if I slapped you so…the belt thing. Thought that would snap you out of it." He waits, and after a moment I don't feel his fingertips at my waist anymore. The loss wrings my heart like one of those old fashioned laundry squeezers.

Who am I, that _Luke_ 's fingertips moving an inch away can all but cripple me? Have these feelings been inside me this entire time, waiting to be woken with a kiss like a Disney princess? And if so, why don't squirrels ever clean _my_ damn house?

If I kiss him again, will I wake up even more, or will it all go back to sleep, like a cartoon bird hit twice on the head with the same anvil?

I try to make sense of my new reality using every cartoon-based philosophy I can muster, but my brain function is limited right now. Mostly by how clearly I can feel his body right behind mine. I can't even remember if he got hard last night, I was that distracted by his mouth. I lick my paper-dry lips.

"If you want to call this off, we can." His voice is barely a sound, the whisper so private I know if I reached for the doorknob right now, he'd serve me coffee until we both went gray and he'd never mention it again. But I'd know. I'd have the agony of his voice wrapped up in my heart like a needle, for decades.

I whirl just at the same moment that he reaches for me. Our lips crash together, a wordless understanding hitting me in the same instant.

He wasn't waiting for my answer.

For once, patient, grouchy-sweet Luke wasn't going to let me make the call. He wanted me too much to wait.

This kiss is desperate, his body grinding into mine with the door at my back and the rim of the window digging into my ribs. I rip at his shirt. I sewed the buttons on once, and I can do it again. That is, if we ever find them all, because they skitter across the floor like hail. And why the hell do men wear a shirt under a shirt? I shove the tee shirt up, my palms claiming his chest like his tongue is claiming mine, rubbing rough into every intimate place I don't think I've ever shared in a simple kiss.

He's hard now. Oh god is he hard now, like he hasn't had a woman in years. I hook my fingers in his belt loops and yank him to me, ripping one loop off his jeans. He growls and his fingers tangle in my hair. My scalp comes alight with tingles that sparkle over my entire body, but I'm suffocated in clothes and everything I want is covered in at least thirteen miles of denim.

I try to hop on one foot to toe off my boots and end up biting his lip. He grunts in protest, and I taste blood but he keeps kissing me.

"Luke, _clothes_. Not hair. Focus." I pull his hand from my hair and plant it directly over the fly of my jeans. I love the way he does that: cradles my head so gentle and firm that I feel like the center of the entire earth. I want him to do it for months, maybe a full season or two. Right after he fucks me half-deaf and totally blind. I rip his belt open, the libido-spiking clink of it lost in the thundering of my heart.

Do I have three hearts now? Four?

Whatever it is, it's not enough. Not for this.

I wrestle his jeans down and as soon as I get him in my hand, his hips buck, driving his erection into my fist.

I grin, half-delirious with how ungentlemanly and honest he is about it. Just like, _Yes. Touch. Now._

I give him an approving squeeze, my inner muscles clenching in heartfelt envy. Then his hands are inside my jeans, skimming under my panties and over my ass. No fucking way were his hands this big and warm before yesterday.

I have to let go of his cock when he kneels to pull my too-tight jeans off. He gets them off one ankle and goes after the next but I can't wait that long. As soon as the cool air hits overheated skin, I pulse even warmer, wetter. The fog isn't in my brain now, it's covering the entire state of Connecticut.

I grab the shoulders of Luke's ruined plaid shirt and jerk him back to standing. Without waiting for him to get his balance, I leap, wrapping my legs around him and locking him into exactly where I want him to be.

"I, oh—" he says, then the head of his cock slips into me. I think by accident, I'm that wet. And just like that, he loses it entirely.

His hips slam against me, the door slams against its jam, and I'm stretched full of him. That electric _zing_ rockets all the way up from the center of me and paralyzes my throat, even as my chest expands impossibly huge. My eyelashes flutter with the pressure of all the emotion inside me and I clutch his shoulders.

He hammers into me, brain-meltingly fast and hard. Just like everything else right now it's entirely too much and perfect and inconceivably un-labelable all at once. My head falls to his neck, with his pulse crashing against my cheek and sweat damp between us. Little gasps of air escape his mouth and I wouldn't be sure how to interpret them except the exact same sound is throbbing inside my chest right now.

I clench around his cock, too wet to hold him in and spasming with too much pleasure to let him go. He powers back into the fierce grip of me, finding a place that turns a dark key inside of me and I don't even have to reach down to my own clit before I'm coming.

"Lore—" He doesn't have enough breath for my whole name, and I love even half of it more than I ever have.

A bone-melting thrust cracks something inside the door and his dick swells even bigger inside of me, catching the last wave of my orgasm. He ducks his head, seeking my mouth, but as soon as our lips touch, his breath breaks. He grits his teeth to hold in a sound so visceral I would know exactly what it meant even if I couldn't feel the hot burst of his release inside of me.

One more thrust rocks him against me, so hard it feels almost involuntary, and I clench my legs to hold him close, not wanting to let go of that electric-fate feeling. Worried it will disappear along with my orgasm and I'll never feel like this again. Never feel as _true_ as this again.

My toes curl inside the wad of my dangling jeans, rubbing against his bare ass where his own jeans have started to fall down.

"I'm so—rry." He's gasping so hard the apology comes out as three words, and I freeze so fast I'm surprised his cock doesn't get frostbite as it slides out of me.

I want to say "What?" I want to say "Fuck you." I want to say "I knew it couldn't last." But it's as much as I can do to sort out the frappe'ed muscles in my legs to try and stand.

My half-shucked jeans wind around my ankles and trip me up but I don't fall because Luke hasn't let me go. His thumbs rub apologetically over the line on my back imprinted by the window in his door.

"I didn't mean—to do that without a condom." He's catching his breath faster than I'd have expected after all that. Then again, Patty did say he moved the washer _and_ the dryer.

"IUD." I say it to reassure the worry in his voice before it even clicks that he's not actually apologizing for having sex with me.

My eyes flicker back to his, the headache threatening as I search him for proof that he's not sorry. His face softens, his eyes going deep and warm. "Hey," he whispers. "You okay?"

I think I nod. I might not move at all. I might blurt out my entire life story. It feels like he could reach into my chest right now and steal all of me. Instead, he kisses my lips. Soft and sweet, with no pressure at all.

"Let me get you a towel," he says, pulls up his jeans, and tucks his cock back into them.

I blink.

I just stand there while he buttons his jeans and goes to a cupboard for a clean hand towel. I stand there while he runs the water until it gets warm so he can dampen the towel for me. I stand there with my bra off one boob and my jeans off one leg, even though I'm starting to drip, because he looks exactly the same zipping his fly as he does pouring my coffee, and that means _this man_ has been there my entire adult life. Close enough to kiss, even though I never did.

And I don't know if that realization makes me feel horribly stupid and wrenchingly alone, or if it makes me feel safer than I ever knew I was.

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 _Author's Note: I don't know if there's anybody still reading Gilmore Girls fanfic, but if there is, I'd love for you to leave a review, or even just click favorite to let me know I should keep posting instead of just sending to my beloved beta. There are a few more chapters of this to come, with lots more romance. Things get pretty intense, so make good use of that follow button!_


	2. My Daughter's Father

_Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who left reviews! It makes me feel a trillion times better about bringing my stuff here to share. Recap of last chapter: hot door sex in Luke's apt._

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 **Lorelai POV**

 _#_

Luke takes one look at me, then at the stairs down to the diner, and his lips thin like he's about to yell at Jess.

"You can't even walk across a room right now. I'm not risking you to stairs," he grumbles.

He bends at the knees and tugs me over one shoulder, standing with his arm secured over my legs and my stomach pinched up somewhere near my bra strap.

"Seriously?" I can't tell if it's the blood rushing to my head, or if this is a little romantic. On the other hand, he at least could have stood up like I was a little wisp of a thing instead of hoisting me with bent knees and proper lifting form like I was Patty's goddamn washing machine.

"What if it worked, huh?" I propose, admiring the flex of his ass as he manhandles our combined weight down the stairs. I make a mental note to sneak into his closet and hem all his plaids shorter so I can get more frequent perusal of these particular assets. "The plan, I mean. Maybe I'm cured enough for stairs."

"Let's not talk about the plan right now, Lorelai," he says between his teeth. The building is suspiciously quiet, so maybe all that banging of the door cleared out the lunch rush. But as soon as Luke gets to the bottom of the stairs and crouches to set me back on my feet, the conversations leap back into action. I catch the phrase, "Nice weather" in at least three different voice.

I grin, fanning some air onto Luke's ruddy cheeks. "A little too much weight on the stairs there, buddy? You should get more cardio."

He swats my hand away, scowling way too darkly for a man who just got thoroughly laid. Or doored. Whatever you call the vertical mambo. "The stairs are fine," he growls. He's not breathing hard even though his cheeks are still red, so he might have a point. I push up onto my toes and kiss him on the cheek just to see if I can pass my eyebrow-pinching headache onto him.

"Have a nice day, Pookie," I say brightly, and brush a little dust off the sleeve of my cardigan as I sashay out of the diner, batting my eyelashes at everyone who's pretending not to stare.

Let 'em. I did damn fine work up there and I don't care who knows it. Especially since they're probably going to be prying at Luke for information all afternoon. That'll be fun, because then he'll show up to the movie all growly and grouchy and I love him like that.

Besides, now that I'm cured of my brain fog, I can afford to tease him a little.

I feel smug all the way home—or until I blink and realize I'm in the lobby of a dry cleaner's. Pulling my phone out of my purse, I call Rory. She was pissed at me last night, but then she cried in every room of our house, and lost her anger in one of those piles of soggy Kleenex. This morning, watching her pick at her pancakes, I almost wish she hadn't.

"Hi, Mom. Still at Luke's, working on your X-ray vision?"

"I've found a new and improved kind of X-ray vision, actually. But no, I'm at the dry cleaners."

"You don't own anything that needs dry cleaning."

"Which is convenient, since I can't afford dry cleaning."

"What do you mean you can't afford it? Is it expensive? Grandma does it, it must be expensive. Why can't you afford it? I told you, I'm getting a new job next year, and I can help with—"

"I'm dating Luke," I cut her off before she can go full tailspin and quit college over my slip of the a-word.

There's a pause. It's about a tenth of what a normal person would register as a pause, but twice a normal Gilmore pause. "You're sure this time? It's been confirmed by independent sources?"

I think of Luke with his pants off. "Confirmed. Fully. Independently. I didn't get a chance to tell you last night, but it was confirmed then." I shove away all thought of Dean drama. Rory's voice sounds upbeat and free of tears this morning and if she's not dwelling, I'm not going to drag her back into it.

The dry cleaning lady is starting to give me the evil eye, so I wiggle my fingers in a cheerful wave and let myself out. I only go as far as the bench out front, because my legs are a little wobbly from the workout we gave the door, and also because the morning after she became the other woman, Rory doesn't need the trauma of hearing her sex-addled mother getting hit by a car. Especially one going the Stars Hollow-15mph for maim-but-not-kill.

"So, what's my approved response here? Are we happy? Freaked out? Should I get You've Got Mail or Thelma and Louise?"

"Neither." I stare up the street. "Luke and I are…kind of going out to the movies tonight."

A tiny squeak escapes her, then it goes quiet like she's trying to hide her glee until I give her the go ahead to be happy.

"How do you feel about this? I mean, he's Luke, and I know you're in college but you do need to eat all summer and it's nothing but Al's if this goes south. These things do have a tendency to go south when I'm involved, and as your mother it's my duty to make sure you're healthy and fed, so if you want me to call it off right now, I can. I mean, I will. I will," I say it again, stronger this time, because it's Rory. If she asked me to, there's nothing I wouldn't do. I think. No, I'm sure.

I check the phone three times to make sure it hasn't dropped the call before a full second goes by.

"I think…"

"Spit it out," I say sternly, because her voice is going all soft and weak the way it does when she realizes she might hurt anybody. Like a bunny. Or a bacterium.

"I think you might, maybe, I'm just saying it's a possibility, freak out."

I can't hear her swallow, but I know the exact length of pause for a Rory swallow, and that was it.

"And I think if you freak out, that will make Luke really sad." Her voice is very small now, and I know it's not the cell reception because our house is barely a half mile from here.

"Yeah." I squeeze my eyes closed, because maybe if I can't see myself, I won't _be_ myself. "Okay, Yale-girl. Tell me how to be Dean, not Jess. God, I hate that I'm Jess. Oh wait, shit—shoot! Forget I said the D-word. Forget I said the J-word. Forget I said anything. Did I tell you Patty told me to have wild sex with Luke? And she offered me a pot brownie? Oh wait, no, not the brownie thing. I just thought she was going to, because of that one time I brought them home and you ate half a pan before we realized that they were—" I can hear Rory trying to interrupt, but I'm in full babble so I don't break off until she hits top volume.

"Mom. Mom! MOM! SHUT UP FORGET ABOUT DEAN OKAY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT LUKE."

"Jeez, you've really worked up some decibels trying to get people to sign those Burundian petitions at school."

"Burma, Mom. And you're not Jess." She sighs. "Look, you know Luke is my dad, right?"

I wince. Christopher hasn't come around much since the new baby, but I had hoped she'd been too busy to notice. "Oh, honey, he's not. You know I didn't know Luke back then, though I hear his short shorts would have gotten me pregnant on sight, so if I had, maybe you'd have a little brother or sister by now."

"De facto dad, Mom. As in practice, not in theory. He taught me how to hold a fork when you swore fingers were easier to clean, he fixed my first bike, he went to my high school graduation and moved me into my dorm, he forgot a different kind of wrench upstairs every eight minutes when I was dating Jess… I mean, he's always been my dad. He's just never been with you."

Luke is a spectacular door fling, perfect for my normal infatuation and then hives dating pattern. But he's also my daughter's father, and I've failed pretty much everyone in my life except Rory.

"I can't screw this up," I say, to myself as much as Rory.

She doesn't sigh, because she's too sweet for that, and she doesn't laugh either. She just says, "I love you, Mom. No matter what, okay?"

And somehow that's so much worse.

"Mmm-hmm," I say, and hang up, because that's all I can do without crying. I sniffle and dab at my eyes, removing all trace of moisture. Then I get up and check the street signs to see where I ended up, and navigate back to Luke's.

* * *

 _Author's Note: I know, that was a bit short! But much raciness to come, and you still have to read about where the title of this piece comes from.  
_


	3. The Nose Knight

When I come into the diner this time, all the voices snap off in mid-sentence except for Luke, who's snarling down at Taylor, "We do not need an intercom between our businesses because I do not now, nor have I ever, had a single thing I wanted to say to you."

"Fine." Taylor straightens his soda jerk hat. "Then it'll be a one-way intercom."

"How about I burn this place to the ground with your stupid soda fountain and your stupid intercom inside of it?" Luke's volcano-red now, his face within inches of Taylor's. I cross the restaurant and tug at his sleeve. "Not now—" He turns and breaks off when he sees it's me, throwing a glare back toward Taylor. "We're done with this conversation."

"The installer is coming on Monday."

"This place'll be ashes by Sunday, then." Luke grabs my hand and pulls me toward the stairs.

"I admire your stamina, cowboy, but we'd better not." I dig in my heels and use his momentum to swing him around the end of the counter, bounding past him and dragging him toward the kitchen. "I just need to talk to you really quick. Alone."

As soon as I get him into the kitchen, I lower my voice, because the half door isn't much for privacy. "I tried to walk home and ended up in the dry cleaners. Clearly my brain isn't fixed yet, so you need to have more sex with me."

Luke's brows shoot up and he tries to interrupt, but I plow on.

"Not crazy frantic door sex, either. Slow, romantic post-date sex. After a full length movie, and dinner. And appetizers." I take a breath. "We need to do this right, Luke, and right means taking my jeans off both ankles next time."

He nods. "You finished?"

I sputter for a second, wanting a more enthusiastic reaction, then lift my chin and nod. "Yes."

He looks past me. "Cesar, you can take your break now."

 _Ah, hell._

The cook scuttles past me, his eyes wide with either awe or repressed laughter. Probably the first, considering the smile he flashes Luke. It's practically a fist bump. I'd be embarrassed if I didn't feel like Luke had fully earned that fist bump.

He wipes his hands on a towel. "Anything else?"

"Pick me up at seven?"

"Better make it eight. I gotta fire my cook."

I bite the inside of my lips to tame my smile. "Good. Fine."

I turn to go and he drops his towel and catches me. Faster than I knew he could move, his chest cradling my back, one hand locked over my belly and his other hand gently cupping my nose.

Which is weird.

Only after all that do I register the sharp corner of the shelf at exactly nose level that I was about to ram into.

"You know what? Maybe you better just stay upstairs. Nap or something until it's time for the movies." Despite his nonchalance a minute ago, he sounds a little stressed now.

"You saved my nose," I say, my voice a little muffled beneath his hand.

He lets me go and picks up the towel, tossing it toward a hamper. "Yeah, well, I don't know how much more abuse it can take, the way you've been ramming it into doors and walls lately. You've broken three coffee cups already this week."

I shake my head. "All these years of lying to my mother, you'd think I'd have nose to spare. But thank for the Nose Knight act. K night not N night."

His eyes are starting to narrow into Concerned Face again.

"I'm fine." I hold up my hands, backing out into the counter area. "I've got this."

A smile warms at the corner of his mouth. He better not be enjoying me being all twittery over him or _his_ nose is going to be in danger next.

I give him a fierce warning glare, and sweep out of the restaurant. But it isn't until the door closes behind me that I start breathing again.

I'm not fine. I'm in so much trouble. These feelings are fluttering up under my rib cage like an insanity of butterflies and all I want to do is drive far away until I feel boring and normal and safe for public consumption.

He's Rory's de facto dad. He's my Luke.

I risk a glance back over my shoulder and he's standing behind the counter, wiping his hands on a new towel, that little smile growing every minute that he watches me stand here like I've forgotten how to walk.

I can't fail him.

* * *

 _Author's Note: Two chapters today, folks, so pause for a second to let me know what you thought and then just keep on reading. I think my favorite chapter of this fic is the next one.  
_


	4. Second First Date, Cue Disaster

I know which dress I'm going to wear before I even get home. I take them all off the hangers, put them on, and then fling them around the room anyway, just to get into the spirit of things. The one I saved for last is a velvety black, with a back that fades to entirely open lace, an off-the shoulder wide V neckline, and fabric that clings softly at my waist.

Luke always reacts a little better to my fitted dresses than my loose drapey ones. I don't know how I know that. I would have sworn I wasn't paying attention, but I guess part of me was. I put on the long, sparkly silver earrings that brush my bare shoulders and stare at myself in the mirror.

"Don't freak out," I whisper. Then I slap myself. Not hard, just enough to get my own attention. "You're better than this," I mumble, and I try to mean it.

"What are you doing up there?" Rory calls. "Do you need help?"

"I'm just bringing the voodoo doll to life!" I call back. "Ignore the screaming."

She pops her head in. "Why is your cheek all red? Blush is out, I keep telling you."

"Aren't you supposed to be gone so I can stay out late and then have my debaucherous way with Luke without scarring you for life?" I wave a hand toward the door. "You better book it. It's a miracle you've made it un-scarred this long."

"I'm going. I'm staying with Lane. She swears the cure for broken hearts is rock and roll so she's going to help me write a song. The boys swore on next week's groceries not to laugh at it." Her fingers fuss with the door frame. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't need me first."

"I don't," I say, too loudly. "Except to explain the whole kissing thing to me again. Where do you put your tongue? And what base is it when they get under the panty hose?"

"Leave Luke's panty hose alone. He's a gentleman." She comes in and kisses me on the cheek. "You're going to do fine, Mom. You don't have to _be_ anything, remember? It's just Luke."

"Right, yeah. We'll just lay around and watch football and scratch things. Maybe belch the ABCs."

"I'd save the belching for the second date. Goodnight!" she calls as she skips down the stairs.

"Goodnight! Bring home some of those good rock and roll drugs for Mommy."

After she leaves, I stare at myself in the mirror for a long time. I don't blink.

I hate guys that show up on time, but this time I'm on the couch, matching purse in lap, at twenty until eight.

I can't believe we didn't use a condom earlier. Though with my IUD, they're really about STDs anyway, and it's not like Luke would have any…though his pretty lawyer ex and her lover with the well-kicked car might. I grit my teeth. If they gave Luke something, I'm going to kick a whole lot more than their cars.

My fingernails dig into the leather of my purse and I refuse to check the time. This feels a little too much like my debutante ball, where you sit alone in a pretty dress waiting to be presented to everyone as suitable for dating. But then, I never did come out, because I was deemed unsuitable.

Amazing how little it feels that things have changed in nearly twenty years. How is it that my daughter is an adult, and I still don't feel like one?

Adults commit. Adults don't have men fleeing down the halls of prep schools from them. Or sitting for hours in the lobbies of inns. Come to think of it, where did Jason disappear to? I saw him going into the men's room, then Luke yelled at me, then kissed me, then tackled Kirk, and I never saw Jason again. He must have come out, seen the score, and left the back way. Lets me off the hook easy, though if I'm being honest with myself, I'd almost rather be waiting for him right now.

Jason was easy. Just odd enough to make things fun, just enough of a spark to keep it interesting, and it was clear from before day 1 that it would never go further than that. I was never going to be eating bran cereal and taking old lady pills in his ultra-modern kitchen with his weirdo dog staring motionlessly from the hearth.

But I can so see myself eating oatmeal in Luke's office-turned-apartment, with butter and bacon bits he crumbled on top to trick me into the extra fiber. One vericose-veined leg tucked up to my chest, and wearing wrinkled sleep shorts I stole from Rory and a shirt I snagged from Luke's closet.

I shake off the image. That's crazy. It'd make much more sense for us to live in my house, not his glorified closet. And who's even moving into each other's houses? I might as well plan how to spend my lottery winnings on my diamond-bedazzled hot tub, because I've barely ever made it past the going-steady portion chapters of the relationship handbook, diamond-ring-bluff with Max notwithstanding.

I've never been the marrying kind. Those kind of girls had perfect debutante balls like Rory, their puffy white dresses and polite escorts a trial run for their some day weddings. Maybe without the trial run, you never figure out how to get to the real thing.

I swallow down a little bile, pop a breath mint, and try not to look at toward the enticingly dark back exit.

At 7:55, I hear Luke's truck, but he doesn't knock until 8:06. Smart man. If I weren't still fighting off the Official First Date nausea, I might giggle at that.

I pull a smile to my face before I open the door, because I know once I see him I'm going to forget how to move. And I do.

He looks the kind of handsome that never fails to jolt me. I forget how well he cleans up with a dark sweater and smooth leather jacket—the upscale kind, not the hoodlum kind. He's not wearing a shirt under his sweater and after all the collared shirts I'm used to, his neck looks too exposed. His hair too combed. I want to lick him and mess him all up at once.

"Come in." I step back, then realize we're supposed to make it to the 8:30 showing at the movies. "Or wait, we could just go, you don't have to come in. Unless you want to see my charming house in all its _accoutrements_." I give it the overblown French pronunciation that would make Michel pop a blood vessel. "Nothing you haven't already seen here, I guess." I laugh, but he doesn't.

He holds out a box. "Here."

No flowers this time. Instead, it's chocolate so fancy Sookie would go crazy for it. My eyes widen. "Are you kidding? And you think I'm leaving the house now that I've got these?"

Luke smiles then, but it's a little sickly around the edges, like he might throw up, too. What the hell are we doing? It's only our first date. Second date, first since I realized it _was_ a date, and it's already weird to the nth degree. If this is how weird it is when it's going well, how horrible will it be when it goes bad? Luke and I already have fights big enough the whole town catches on just from a single post-fight look between us.

"Boy, you weren't kidding, you're not even going to put them down." Luke looks from me to the chocolates I'm clutching for dear life. "You can bring them, you know. I'll hide 'em in my coat so the ticket kid doesn't take them." He shrugs. "I just thought, flowers, candy, already did the flowers and you're kind of a candy type anyway. I was saving those chocolates for Christmas but I figured it wouldn't hurt to use them early."

"You bought me a Christmas present already?" Crap, I can't start tearing up, or I'll never stop. I'll start thinking about the flowers and the waltz and the way he painted Rory's bike purple even though he looked offended to even be seen purchasing that color. And how he went back for more to paint the bar of the training wheels to match.

"Christmastime gets busy, you know. It's no big deal. Don't worry, I'll buy you another present now that this one's used up."

Of course he would. And it would be understated, and purely _me._ The only reason I haven't gone bankrupt keeping this crappy house standing is because of the five handyman hours he always gives me for my birthday that have stretched to closer to fifty in a bad year.

I thrust the chocolates back at him, my stomach churning. "I can't do this."

"Dammit!" The word busts out of him loud enough Babette will probably be peeking out her window. "I knew this was some kind of test, the way you said it earlier. But I thought I'd at least make it past the foyer. Was it the chocolate?" He snatches at the box. "Gimme those. I'll get you something else."

Perversely, I hold on to them. "No, I don't want something else. I like the chocolate. Of course I like the chocolate, you knew I would like it and I can't like you because I knew you'd know that I liked the chocolate!"

He glares at me, the other end of the box crumpling in his strangling fingers. "I can't believe I understood all of that. And I really can't believe you're saying it to me right now, after everything."

"Yes, you can," I whisper. My eyes are stinging and I have to get him out of here before I cry. He's seen me cry dozens of times, but he can't see me cry over him.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess I can." He takes a breath, and I feel the shift in the air between us.

That was it. That was our five minutes. In ten years, I'll look back on this and think, "Yeah, I slept with Luke. Weird. Can't believe that ever happened."

Then he knocks the chocolates out of my hand. The box comes open and they rain out across the floor, the paper cups crumpling under his foot when he steps toward me. "You know what? No."

He grabs me and yanks me into his chest, kissing me with so much longing and anguish that I cry even as I kiss him back. Because I can't afford to kiss him back and we both know it.

"One reason, Lorelai. Give me one damn reason to go, and I'll do it."

His arms are still around me, his hands hot through the lace of the dress I knew he'd love before he ever even saw it.

"There's too much at stake." My lips tremble as I fight not to sob. " _You're_ too much to have at stake. I can't be trusted with you."

"Too bad!" He kicks the door shut. "We're going upstairs and we're having slow, romantic after-date sex, appetizers or no appetizers. Deal with it."

My lips twitch in spite of myself, because I love it when he gets mad. He usually doesn't hit this volume unless I've been needling him for a good half an hour or Taylor's in the same room. Plus, I've never had a guy shout in my face that we're going to have romantic sex and I'm going to deal with it.

"Well, okay, Romeo, when you put it that way."

He doesn't let go of my hand, towing me toward the stairs with chocolate squishing under our feet. I kick off my heels so I won't track it across the carpet, but even I'm not crazy enough to try and get him to pause and take off his shoes right now.

"Shouldn't you carry me?" I say when we get to the stairs. He throws back a look so furious I'm smiling before I think better of it. "It's better for the romance. And the sex. The romantic sexing. That we're having." I skip up the stairs behind him, then catch sight of one of the smudges of chocolate he left, this one with white flecks. "Damn, I think that was a coconut truffle."

"Keep moving," he snaps. "No getting distracted by shoe chocolate."

"Gotcha. No shoe chocolate." I really like him when he's all growly and bitey like this. He seems less…breakable than when both our hearts are in his eyes and my front door's wide open behind him.

But sex? Sex I can handle. Turn on the mechanical bull and throw in a case of condoms, baby, my kid's out of the house until morning.

"What happened in here? Did you forget you stored your land mine in the closet?" He stops at the edge of the dress shrapnel.

"You can't go on a date without trying on every dress you own! If you do, it makes it cheap. You don't want to be like a three-dress date, do you?" I gasp in mock horror, deciding not to tell him he was technically a one-dress date before I threw in the whole closet and half of Rory's just for luck.

He looks at the dresses, looks at me. Looks marginally less furious. "How many dresses _is_ that?"

I crane my neck to the side and purse my lips. "Twenty-five, maybe as many as thirty-two if we're counting skirts, and I almost went as casual as jeans and boots for a minute, so probably five of those."

"So thirty-seven."

I wink. "Get this one on the floor and I'll let you call it thirty-eight, Casanova."

He doesn't move, but I feel him pulling away from me all the same. "Don't do that."

"What? Flirt? Might be a little late to drag on the nun's habit now, but if you're into role play, I could give it a whirl."

He looks pained, his gaze flicking from my left shoulder to the wall behind me. "I can't kiss you when you're like that."

"Like what? Snarky, overcaffeinated?" I tilt my head with a brittle smile. "Hate to tell you, but that train might have steamed out of the station, too. Thirty-odd let's call it twenty-nine years ago."

"Beautiful," he says hoarsely. "Untouchable and all—" He throws out a hand in frustration and turns to pace but the floor is crowded with dresses and he seems reluctant to step on any of them. "Flippant." His jaw sets and he looks back at me with that piercing focus that ratchets this a notch closer to a four-panty day. "This isn't sex, Lorelai."

"Well, not yet, but if you'd get on the thirty-eighth dress bandwagon, it could—" I stutter into silence at the look on his face.

I swallow. Quick, then smile again because if there's anything Emily Gilmore ever taught me it's that smiling through your pain keeps the sharks from circling. It's wobbly because I know Luke can see through it, and that slices right down to the pale pink center of me that has no defenses.

"So, I'm not great at the serious thing."

"I know that, Lorelai." He grits it out through his teeth. "But there's no one else watching. Do you really not trust me enough to cut the crap for one second?"

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep my lips from trembling. "Yeah, you're really not the problem."

"I am, though. I am as much as you ever were." He lifts a foot to come closer, and scowls down at the floor. "Can we get a snow shovel or something? I know you own one, because I loaned you mine six or seven years ago."

I kick the dresses out of the way and he crosses the boundary, but he doesn't kiss me. Instead, he takes my hand and pulls me toward the bed, nudging a few more skirts aside so we can sit.

"What, so we're going to have a solemn dad on the edge of the bed talk? I really did misbehave." I pout. "You could just spank me and we could call it even."

"A nun, a leprechaun and Chuck Norris walk into a bar…"

"The way I usually tell it there's a riding crop involved."

He sighs.

"What? The leprechaun has it, not the nun!"

"I figured if I told a joke, maybe you wouldn't have to."

"Good thinking." I lean forward and leave a soft kiss on his cheek, so he knows I'm trying. "I'll have to remember that one."

"Listen, Lorelai, I know you're worried about screwing up. Don't. You're not the only one with a crappy track record with relationships. Of the two of us, I'm the only one who's gotten divorced in a Mailboxes Etc."

I rub my fingers over his palm, wincing sympathetically. "I remember."

He glances away.

"We really are terrible at talking about important stuff, aren't we?" The sinking feeling in my stomach keeps my voice low.

"Pretty much. I don't talk at all and you talk circles around everything."

A soft laugh bubbles out of me. "Yup."

He looks over at me and somehow I think I could bear this conversation more easily if he were wearing his backwards cap. Because I've never felt closer to a man, but I think we're breaking up.

"Look, my relationships never last because I'm stubborn and set in my ways," he says, "and I don't much like to change my habits because they work for me."

"Uh-huh." It's all I can do to nod and hold back the laugh, because he's dead on. Though the urge to laugh fades when I realize he could just as well be talking about me.

"Plus, everybody I date, even Rachel…" He shrugs a little, his solid shoulders sagging. "They always feel temporary, no matter how hard I try to act like they're not. It's like I'm just killing time. Nothing sticks."

I blink, the oxygen hardening in my lungs. I've never heard anybody put it into words before, that feeling when I start to get itchy in a relationship. Like it's not quite going where I want, but I can't really define what that is, or why it never locks into place. Is Luke right? Have I just been killing time with all these guys I never had any intention of keeping? But no, wait, he was talking about himself, not me.

I look down. "Yeah, I know a little about that."

So many thoughts are rattling through my head that I don't even register the silence between us.

"I thought it was Chris I was waiting for," I say finally. I shouldn't have said that out loud. Not to the man I'm on a date with. But the man I'm on a date with is also Luke. "I wanted him to be my happily ever after, because he's Rory's father and a family is so much…" I struggle for a word, trying to explain something I've never let myself think about for long enough to define it, " _more_ than a couple. You know?"

He jerks a single nod, and somehow I see Jess in that movement, and a hint of how he and his sister both smile with their eyes first. I see how empty his tiny apartment looks these days and how excited he was when Rory got into Yale.

"Chris and I never really fit. Not as people. I think I just thought we might because he knows me better than most of the guys I date. He knew me before—he knew Hartford me, you know?" I chuckle roughly. "Stepford me."

"I doubt you ever fit the Stepford mold very well." His eyes warm, even in the little peek he sends sideways.

"So are we pretty much hopeless?" I play with his fingers. I might never get to hold his hand again without it being weird, and I like his fingers, all wide and rough and no-nonsense. "A couple of perpetual bachelors?"

"Nah."

I bump him with my shoulder, smirking at how casually he says it. "How do you figure?"

"Because we're too stubborn to bend for other people, but me and you? We're stubborn in all different places, so we fit. You're already part of my routine, so I don't have to change it." He shrugs, the fabric of his shirt tickling my arm. "Just move where one of us sleeps at night, if you feel like it. But you're not going to tell me how to cook, and I'm not going to argue with you about your precious music or movies because they all seem fine to me."

When he says it like that, it sounds so simple. Especially because…he's a little bit right.

"What about all the events I go to? You hate events." I bump his shoulder again, swinging my feet playfully.

The corner of his mouth kicks up. "If it involves you putting on a nice dress and makes you laugh, I'll go." His smirk widens. "And if it's something we'd both hate but you're obligated, we won't go and you can tell everybody it's because of your stubborn jerk boyfriend."

"Is that what you are?"

He lets go of my hand and steeples his hands in his lap, the silence between us returning.

"Want me to get you a church bell to vandalize?" I offer.

He huffs a little breath out his nose, like half a laugh. "Yeah, probably. I've been trying to get over this thing I've got about saying what I feel. Feel like a world class idiot every time I try. Maybe I ought to try jokes like you."

"A nun, a leprechaun and Chuck Norris walk into a bar…"

He smiles. "Thing is, once it's out, it never seems so hard." He looks over at me. "You're the most important person in my life, Lorelai."

I can't even remember the meaning of the word punch line.

"You have been for a long time now, even though the only title I qualify for is friend. Waiter. Occasional handyman."

"Hey. You're a lot more than that." I catch his hand, pulling his stiff fingers apart and holding them in my own.

I cast around for the right word and don't find it. He's _mine_ , the way Rory and Sookie are. The way my parents have never been. I take a breath, but it feels too early and also way too late to say _I love you._

I chicken out. "You're also my truck rental and mattress moving service."

I brace for his totally justified frustration, but he just smiles. "It's kind of satisfying to watch somebody else choke for once." I smack him and he laughs. "It's hard, right?"

I run my hand up his thigh, just for revenge. "I don't know…" I press a little closer, tempting his arm with the curve of my breasts. "Is it?"

He coughs and shifts his weight on the bed before I even get past mid-thigh, and that does wonders for my battered ego.

With my free hand, I tip his chin toward me, the stubble sharp and soft on my fingers. "It's not sex, Luke."

I get dizzy as I say it, but he's right. Once the truth is out, it feels easy as anything. I kiss him, because that's even easier. Somehow when my lips touch him, all that _raw_ melts into gentle care, like my body can't hide how special he is to me, even when I can't seem to say the words.

I don't want to tell him I love him, because I've said that to other people, and this thing between us is _just_ between us.

"Marry me," I blurt, with my fingers tangled in the buttons of his shirt.

He pulls away, a little shocked but mostly amused. "At least buy me dinner first."

"I've dated like a hundred guys, but—"

"Oh please, don't spare my feelings."

I smack him. "Shut up. I was saying I've dated a bunch but I've never been married because that's too serious. It's that biding time thing. I thought I was afraid of commitment, but the whole time, I had no real intention ofcommitting, you know? Because I knew once I was, that was it. No do overs. Please tell me I'm making sense."

"No, I'm following. But you don't have to propose to get me into bed, Lorelai." He's starting to smile again as he tips me onto my back. "I'm old fashioned, but I'm not that old fashioned."

He kisses me without answering my question, the fabric of his trousers silky against my inner thighs as his knee settles between my legs. But I ease, because I can feel in his kiss that his answer is yes. He may torment me with this for months before he gives in, but for me, Luke's answer will always be yes.

* * *

 _Author's Note: First, thanks so much to all the wonderful people who've taken the time to welcome me to the Gilmore Girls fandom. I think I like it here! Second, what did you all think? That last scene was the one I wrote the whole fic for. Though I think we need one more chapter yet for more sexy times and to reveal the reason behind the title of the piece, so stay tuned for that, coming very soon._


	5. Horny Tears

"Ooh, did you see the back of my dress?" I pull away from his kiss, a little thrill rippling through me at the haze in his eyes. Wonder if Luke ended up at the dry cleaners on his way over here, too? "I thought you'd like the back."

"Let's see it." He rolls me over and his hand smoothes over my bottom. "I do like it." I can tell the second his gaze travels up to the thin lace of the real back though, because his hand jerks. "Christ, you were going to wear that into a restaurant? Do you hate me or what?"

I wriggle until I move enough that his fingers end up under the hem of my skirt and then I flip over, the heat of his palm over my thigh better than an hour of acrobatic foreplay with another guy. I slip my hands under his shirt and his skin tenses under my fingers.

"Uh, do you want me to get the lights?" He throws a wild look across the room and I can tell he's calculating how far it is to the switch and how long the round trip might take.

"Why, Butch Danes." I put on my best Scarlett O'Hara. "Are you shy?"

He scowls. "I see the pictures on the magazines you and Rory read. You're shameless."

"Men's Health is about health," I maintain staunchly. "Health is important." But about mid-sentence it clicks that he's self-conscious. I can feel his belly under my hands even if I can't see it, a single firm sheet of muscle that belongs to a man that works for a living rather than working out for a living. I switch tack, because I know once his hands climb high enough to feel exactly how soaked he's gotten my third pair of panties, he's not going to be worried anymore about my opinion of his body. I give him my best beguiling smile. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Under my skirt, his fingers twitch and climb a little higher.

I roll him underneath me and lean down. "Zipper's under the left arm," I whisper.

I clench my thighs against his hips as his hand leaves me, but it's worth it when he tugs my zipper down. I shrug off the wide neckline of the dress, and his hands smooth it down my arms. There was no way to hide a bra under this thing, so when the fabric falls away, it's just me and him.

He stares, and I can feel the bulge of his response through the thin barrier of my panties, but when he swallows, I know that's not _all_ of reaction. His gaze rises back to my face. "Lorelai," he whispers.

I've waited my whole life for a man to look at me like that.

For _anyone_ to look at me like that. My own mother looks at me like I'm something she wishes she'd have kept the receipt on, and everyone else always has a mix of fondness and tolerance, often more of the second than the first. Even Luke, at least until now.

I lean down to kiss him, but I'm not quick enough because he sees.

"Lorelai?" He tries to crane his head back, but flat on his back, he doesn't have much leverage. "Why are you crying?"

"Horny tears." I try to rebound, but the scent of him gets me crying even harder. Coffee and sawdust and that cologne he's had forever because he only wears it twice a year. My face twists and I press it into his shoulder. The sweater is scratchy-soft against my cheek, just like his stubble. It's his date sweater. He only has the one, and I've already cried into it once, after my grandma called me out as a charity case right in front of my daughter.

He cups the back of my head with one hand and I feel the soft press of a kiss against my head. "It's okay," he whispers, just like he did then, and I know, absolutely, that he will _make_ it okay. Just like he did then.

But it's too late, because everything is already perfect.

* * *

He makes love to me slowly, just like I asked him to, even after I beg him to hurry. He seems to enjoy the begging, though.

Every time he touches me, it's the same as when I kiss him. Every bit of important that we are to each other warming every movement.

I didn't know I could feel this much, and I don't think I could endure it with anyone else. I don't like the what-if of that feeling. The knowledge that the bigger it is, the bigger the crater can be, until the potential crater outweighs me.

But Luke's hands anchor me in the moment and every time the crater tugs at the edge of my thoughts, his touch brings me back. There's nothing those hands don't know how to do. And I can tell how big all of this is inside him, too, can see how even though he was infinitely more prepared than I was, he still didn't expect _this._

My first orgasm barely takes the edge off, and even my third feels anticlimactic against everything that's going on inside my head, my chest, between our intertwined fingers.

I'm still dizzy with it, even after Luke lies spent against me, his heart thundering against my ribs and his breath feathering the strands of my hair.

"Why now?" I whisper, holding him a little tighter.

He shoves himself up on an elbow, still breathing hard. "Well, you took your dress off, so after that, I feel like the movie was out."

I roll my eyes at him. "Come on, you said we were going to get better at this. Talking. Right?"

"Not when I'm still trying to make sure you didn't just spontaneously combust my lungs." He coughs. "I'm too old for this shit." He shifts his weight to the side. "Besides, it's a weird question. I just…got to thinking about some things and realized it was time for a change. That's all." He snaps off the answer so abruptly I shoot a look at him, but he's busy hauling himself up to sit against the headboard. "Why, what changed for you?"

I pull the sheet up and twirl onto my stomach, shoving the hair out of my eyes. Every bit of the haze is gone and my thoughts feel as sharp and clear as they've ever been. "I tried to explain it to you a few years back, when I went on the date with that younger guy from class, remember?"

"I remember."

Of course he does. He's still wearing the watch he was fixing when we had that talk, because Luke never throws anything away, and as far as I can tell, that includes memories.

"What does that have to do with now?" he asks, pulling the sheet a little higher onto my shoulder blades.

I try not to pick at the pillowcase. "I was trying to explain that I needed to keep you in my life, even if it meant being 'alone' forever." I airquote, because single isn't alone, not quite. Not as long as I had him, and Rory.

"I know." He hooks a finger into the curl of my hand, rubbing a thumb over the back of my knuckles. "I told you that you had me. I've regretted tipping my hand a time or two since then." He half-winces a smile. "But I still meant it."

"I meant it, too." I hold his eyes for a second. He's not as young as he was when I first came to town, and neither am I. And here we are, still. The both of us.

"So when?" His voice is low, a curiosity rather than a challenge. I like how the rumble of it is different in the softness of a bedroom rather than in the linoleum and steel of the diner.

"At the wedding. We were having a great time together, and you looked amazing, and there was this spark when you asked me to dance and I thought, 'This is the date I always wish I was having but never am. But of course it isn't a date because it's Luke.'" I smile wryly. "But then when you said we should do it again sometime, something clicked. It was like, hot guy plus spark plus laughing _does_ mean date, and we'd been on one that whole time without me realizing what it was."

His thumb has stalled mid-sweep and his attention is utterly focused on me, the way he rarely lets on that it is. He's not smiling, and I realize he's bracing. I squeeze his hand to reassure him that I'm not going anywhere.

"The way you said it." A smile drifts onto my face, remembering. "You weren't awkward or weird or trying to impress me. You were just…you. Even though we were on a date. And that was the first moment I think I ever thought I could have both. Have you and _have_ you. I saw it, you know?" I let my hair fall forward and laugh a little because it's the only way I can let the words out. "Once I saw it, I wanted it. Bad."

He chuckles. "Yeah, me too. Closer to that than you'd think. I mean, I always thought you were pretty."

"Reaaaally?" I prop my chin on my free hand and bat my eyelashes. "Tell me more."

"And annoying. Did I mention annoying?" He laughs, but he's not even trying not to grin and I love that he feels safe enough to show how happy he is. "I don't know. You were always going a million miles an hour but you didn't have anybody to look after you. So I did, a little. I always thought maybe someday—but then I got used to things being like this. And then one day it started to feel like it was too late."

I wrinkle my nose. "But when was your _moment_? Was it the wedding? Or I thought maybe when Max and I—when you made me the chuppah."

He crooks a knee, the sheet falling away to reveal his hairy, muscular thigh. I like the intimacy of that. Luke's naked leg, in my bed. _Wonder if he still has those short shorts._

"Nah, the chuppah was me trying to be happy for you. I figured a hundred or so hours of carving would drive the point home."

"Did it?" I ask, wanting him to say no.

He shrugs. "Sort of."

"So when?"

His brows pinch together. "Some things don't have a moment, Lorelai. It was a long time coming, let's leave it at that."

"Sounds like maybe they do and you just don't want to tell me." I kick my feet under the sheets. "Was it when you were having private time in the shower?" I waggle my eyebrows at him. "Or maybe when you married Lawyer Lady?" Please let it be when he married her. Or even better, when he immediately tried to divorce her. Because when he said the word "married" to me, I had absolutely no reason to feel as gut-shot as I did.

"Doesn't matter," he grumbles.

"Luuuuke, come on." I sit up, hoping flashing him my boobs will help my case. "I told you mine."

"It was my book, okay?" He throws off the sheet. "Jess's book, the stupid _You Deserve Love_ book that you mocked. It was my book first, but I gave it to him because neither one of us is any good at relationships. I bought it because I realized I didn't want to die alone, and I never wanted him to know how low that feels. Happy now?" He explodes out of bed and grabs the first piece of clothing he sees, which happens to be a dress. He sends it flying toward my dresser.

His words ring in my ears. _Die alone._ "Did a cat show up at your house?"

He gives me the most scathing of glares. "Nice, Lorelai. Real nice." He heads for the door like he might walk all the way home without pants.

I leap after him, but my ankles are still tangled in the sheets and I go down hard on my knees. At least I catch his hand as I fall so I don't follow up with a faceplant.

"I'm serious." I ignore the rug burn blazing in both knees. "A cat showed up at my house, like a sign. Then two, both of them looking at me so expectantly. Emily Gilmore expectant, like even as they waited they already knew how disappointing I was. How I was destined to be a cat lady, I just hadn't gotten around to the cat part yet."

I let go of his hand and curl my knees up to my chest.

"Do you think Jess is done with that book?" I ask in a very small voice.

He sighs. "Lorelai, you don't need the book."

He comes down to sit on the floor next to me. It's infinitely comforting that Naked Luke looks exactly as exasperated and familiar as Diner Luke. Only, better. Definitely better.

"The book is all about learning to let people love you, and everyone already loves you."

"No, Luke. They really don't." Nearly everyone in my life only knows me Maybelline deep. And I know they don't want more, because all the ones who knew more than that all went running. "Rory does, and Sookie, but both of them are so pathologically sweet if I spent my spare time cutting puppies into little pieces they'd just stitch them back together for me."

"Doubt it," Luke says. "Rory can't sew a stitch, as far as I've seen, and Sookie's more likely to be getting stitches than giving them."

"I appreciate the effort, but the nun/leprechaun jokes work better."

"Noted."

I shove my hair out of my face. "It's fine, it's not new. Love just sort of…bounces the other direction when it gets too close a look at me."

He's got that pained look on his face like he wishes I'd stop whatever it is that I'm doing. It's never occurred to me until now that it might not always be me he's pained by. He touches my elbow. "Hey now. Why don't you let me make you some coffee? Coffee always makes you feel better."

I shake my head. "Not right now."

We stare at the carpet together for a minute.

"If you want love, you deserve love," Luke says, out of nowhere.

My head snaps up, because there's literally nothing I would have expected him to say less than that. "Sorry, Lassie, who's down the well?"

"Say it out loud." He shrugs. "You'll feel like a real set of buttocks, but it helps. Really."

I sniffle. "Really?"

He kisses my forehead and hugs me into him. "You don't need the book, Lorelai."

"Luke?"

"Hmm?"

I definitely like Bedroom Luke voice better. "I think you'd better carry me back to bed. I'm pretty sure if I get up right now, I'll trip over everything in the room at once and my bones are brittle because I never drink any milk with my coffee like you tell me to." My head is tucked under his chin, his hand rubbing my back, but I swear I can read his smile in the air. "Not the fireman way, though, that made me a little sick. The romance novel way. In your arms."

"You don't need me to carry you."

"I mean, it's no big deal. If you're afraid you'll put your back out it's fine. My nose has taken plenty of bruises already, it can last through one more."

"My back is fine."

"Are you sure? Because we just exerted it a lot and I don't want—"

"Would you just hold still?" He's already working his arms under my knees to lift me, and I hide my smile in his neck.

Naked Luke or Diner Luke, I still know how to get my way. Though I'm starting to think that might be because it's actually his way, too.

* * *

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 _Author's Note: That's all for now, my dears! I hope you liked it, and I hope that all of those little invented moments tugged as deeply on your heartstrings as they did on mine. If so, please leave me a review because they're my favorite. I've already written a new fic: a sweet little moment between Rory and Luke, with a little Lorelai for good measure. I'll likely put it up later this week, so author follow if you don't want to miss that!_


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